Still Show Up
I woke up after a restless night, feeling a little off, but I was excited to sub a class that I used to teach Monday mornings. Even better, a dear friend was teaching after me, which meant I would stay and take her class.
I have had more time alone with Suz and Christopher having different trips away. I love my time alone, and yet there's something about extended solitude that I think perhaps connects me to my parents' divorce when I was 12, to that particular quality of quiet I felt then. It echoes the marriage I was in with a husband who traveled so often, working hard for our family. And it ties into something I've been writing about lately—this general feeling of aloneness in our world.
I know the difference these days between feeling alone and feeling lonely. Alone can be spacious. But the lonely? Nobody else can really fill that, nor should they. It creeps in from time to time—a lonely that's supposed to be there when people have moved on or passed away. Today, I felt it more acutely.
I felt my 20-year-old enjoying and creating his life in Los Angeles, 400 miles away. I felt the subtle shift with my youngest, who will be 18 in six weeks and rightfully does not need me as much.
The loneliness I felt this morning wasn't something anyone else could have filled. It was a distant, somewhat detached bewilderment that my father has been gone for 14 years and my stepmother for 15. I will be turning 54 in November—the same age she was when she passed. While this doesn't consume me as I freely write about my day, it does swirl in my head on mornings like today. It is more a observation or an interest in the healing done so far and the grace to not feel any different than I did this morning.
I've been toying with the idea that we don't completely heal—not in a staying-stuck-in-the-story kind of way, but in a way of alleviating the pressure of healing completely. I don't think we're meant to heal completely when we have loved so big whether it be a passing of another, a marriage ending, a partnership dissolving or an empty nest on the horizon.
What I have learned over the last 15 years is this: the more I show up, the less lonely I feel. The more I show up, the less it's about me—and in all the good ways.
So this morning I showed up to teach, knowing in my heart of hearts that the moment I began to teach, or even stepped into the studio, I would feel better.
I did.
And here's the magic: Something or a feeling that would have stopped me in my tracks for moments or days or weeks before is now just a gentle remembering, a nod to "Oh, that's right. When you feel this way, this is what's going on inside of you."
The showing up is where the magic happens. It's not big magic—it's the kind of magic that lets things sparkle a little bit.And here's what happened today when I showed up:
I got to see friends I haven't seen in a long time.
I got to see friends I saw just a few days ago.
As I was walking out of the yoga studio, I met a little girl who immediately grabbed my hand and said, "Hi! My name is Hannah. I get to walk with you today." Her father and brother were close by. I looked at her father like, Is this OK with you? He smiled: "She's good at making friends." Hannah had a lot to say. It was great.
In the parking lot, I witnessed a big sister helping a little brother with his tears.
At the grocery store, I watched a dad carefully zooming his probably three-year-old around in the cart, both of them delighting in the simple joy of it.
So while I have these things in my life that are transitions and old grief, I realize this must be so — so the world can continue to sparkle with little-kid wonder and new parents and all the beautiful ordinary moments that keep us connected.
All of this continuing to create a lineage and trust that no matter how we're feeling—lonely, sad, joyful, loving, grieving, happy—it's all okay. There's room for everything, and we still show up
